Tom Orbach from MarketingIdeas.com Interview onGrowth In Reverse Podcast

Tom Orbach: [00:00:00] I had like a thousand people that got my first email, which is amazing because when you start with zero and you just send out emails, no one reads them. It's, it feels really bad.

Chenell Basilio: Mine went out to four people, so I do know how that feels.

Tom Orbach: Without my full-time job, I would've never succeeded in my newsletter because

Chenell Basilio: I've been watching your journey since around 10,000 subscribers, and I was like, wow, he's just exploding.

Tom Orbach: I physically write the newsletter one day a week, but every time I'm breathing and not not asleep, I'm growing the newsletter. Only after you send a hundred emails, I think you actually can better realize what's the content that people want to read.

Chenell Basilio: I'm curious, so you're the marketing ideas guy. What kind of ideas do you have for marketing this and like growing the newsletter from here?

Yeah,

Tom Orbach: so my overall plan is to do

Chenell Basilio: Tom. You run a newsletter called Marketing Ideas, and I'm super pumped to have you on the show today. Welcome.

Tom Orbach: Thank you for having me.

Chenell Basilio: Yeah, we are [00:01:00] excited because you, you've been on my radar for a long time. You've been running marketing ideas since I think September of 2023. Is that about right?

Tom Orbach: August?

Yeah. August 23.

Chenell Basilio: Yeah. August 23. Okay, cool. Uh, so it's been. What, like almost 20 months now?

Dylan Redekop: Almost two years. Two years? It's almost August, almost two years. Like in a month? It's like August. Yeah.

Chenell Basilio: Oh yeah. It's June 3rd. Okay. Yeah, you're right. Wow. That's crazy. Um, and so at this point it looks like you have 43,000 free subscribers, so congrats.

That's awesome.

Tom Orbach: Correct. Thank you.

Chenell Basilio: Do you wanna tell everybody a little bit about your newsletter and how you kind of started with it?

Tom Orbach: Sure. Okay. So I'm a marketer. I write about marketing and for the longest time people always told me that my thing was marketing ideas. Like I meet with a lot of founders and entrepreneurs and we talk about branding and strategy and hiring and whatever, but whenever we speak about marketing ideas, I see everyone's light.

Everyone's eyes like light up. And I think like for the past five years, any meeting I had with any founder or entrepreneur, like [00:02:00] whenever we got to talking about marketing ideas, they told me, oh my God. Please talk about it more, like let's talk about it more, write about it. I want to, uh, hear more about it from you and et cetera.

So, um, in 2022. I built a side project called the Viral Post Generator for LinkedIn. It's like a simple parity tool that, uh, generates cringy LinkedIn posts, uh, based on your input. Uh, so, so that was funny and it like a few million people. Um, I. Uh, um, uh, use this tool and then it was acquired by a company and they paid me a really, uh, nice amount of money.

And I used this money to buy the domain and marketing ideas.com. It was a very expensive domain. Someone bought it back way in, uh, um, 1995, which is the year I was born. And they have done to it since then. And I finally could, uh, buy it with the money that I got from the tool that I sold. Uh, so why did I buy the domain marketing areas.com and not.co [00:03:00] or.io or.net, uh, or other things because.com is like the leading, uh, domain, uh uh.

Uh, extension, and I think that once you have the.com, you are eligible to become the category king. You know what I mean? Mm-hmm. Like only you could have the.com and nobody else could ever have it. Only you have it. And, and, and it's like, it, it, it makes you automatically much more, um, credible and also eligible to be the category Categor king, at least in my perspective.

Yeah. And I didn't actually know like that. I'm going to do a newsletter. I thought about a website or like just a list that I will sell, or Airtable or, I dunno. But the first thing I did once I had the new, the, the domain was to start a waiting list, just like a simple landing page with, uh, leave your email address below.

And I started speaking in conferences and. Uh, being a panelist or being a keynote speaker and every time I plugged it in and I told people to join the wait list of marketing.com [00:04:00] without knowing what it's going to be, uh, in the future. And one at one point I decided that I will do a substack, a newsletter.

And the, in August 23, like you said, I started a newsletter and it's been almost two years. And, uh, I'm now at 44,000, uh, subscribers and I also flipped the switch and, uh, uh, and able paid subscriptions, uh, exactly a month ago. Wow.

Chenell Basilio: And you were crushing it with both. I'm excited to see it. 'cause I've been watching your journey since I think like around 10,000 subscribers and I was like, wow.

He's just exploding. Wow.

Yeah. Thank you so much. I know

you like, you launched and you had like 1300 subscribers in the first week just because you were telling people about it beforehand and like talking about it and. At conferences and events and that kind of thing.

Tom Orbach: Yeah, I, I had, I had a wait list, so it was very easy to not starting with zero, like I imported everyone to Substack and I had like a thousand people that got my first email, which is amazing because when you start with [00:05:00] zero and you just send out emails, no one reads them.

It's, it feels. Really bad.

Chenell Basilio: Yes. Mine went out to four people. Oh, wow. So I do know how that feels.

Dylan Redekop: I think my substack went out, my first one went out to two people and they were both like my two test email, uh, addresses. Oh wow. So yeah, we're nice. A thousand is a little bit more significant. So were you nervous when you hit the send for the first time, having that big of an audience?

'cause for Chanel and I, it was like just, you know, al pretty much nobody is reading this, but how did it feel publishing like your first newsletter to a thousand people?

Tom Orbach: I was very nervous also, like it was the first time ever I wrote a newsletter. I, I didn't have a voice and tone. I didn't know mm-hmm.

What will keep people like, hooked or not. So it was a lot of trial and error. And I think like if I just waited without sending name and I'm thinking about it and researching about it without sending anything, it, it, it would've never worked. Like only after you send, uh, this, actually this week was the hundredth.

Email that I sent. So, uh, only after you send a hundred emails, I think you actually can, uh, [00:06:00] uh, better like realize. Mm-hmm. What's the content that people want to read?

Dylan Redekop: No, absolutely. Publishing is very powerful. When you don't publish, you don't get that feedback and that chance to iterate and test and see what's working.

So publishing is very important. I'm curious, you were publishing weekly, was that, is that correct?

Tom Orbach: Correct. Every Friday I send one new marketing idea. Like that. That's the big promise. One new marketing idea every Friday.

Dylan Redekop: Okay. And you were doing all of this on the side of a full-time job and still yet, you're consistently publishing every week.

How did you juggle those? Because like you mentioned, now you're at 44,000 subscribers still with a full-time job. Um, can you talk to us a little bit about like how you, how you grew with that and Chanel, if you have any kind of add-on questions to growth, uh, feel free.

Tom Orbach: Sure. So I, I work in marketing. I'm the director of growth marketing at a company called Wiz.

It's a cloud security company. And, uh, you know, marketing is my passion. Like I write about marketing in my newsletter and I work in marketing and none of it feels like work. So I feel, I feel lucky [00:07:00] enough to be able to do this and do have, uh, and, and audience that loves what I like, what I love as well.

But I think that without my full-time job, I would've never succeeded in my newsletter. Because all of those experiments and the marketing areas and the tactics and the strategies that I come up with and send people every Friday. I, I do it. I, I do all of those myself in the full-time job that I have. So this job, this full-time job basically gives me a platform to experiment and try new things and learn from my colleagues and friends.

So it's like I, I think they're intertwined. Now in terms of like time allocation or time, like how do I manage my time? It's super easy. Like I work Monday, Monday to Friday, and then on Saturdays I write the newsletter, like I dedicate one day per week, the Saturday for the newsletter, and like that's it. I think if I had more than one day.

I would've just stretched it to forever and it would've taken me like forever to write every single piece. So that's easy.

Chenell Basilio: [00:08:00] That's awesome. Yeah. So the constraint of only having that one day has really helped you in a way of like just forcing yourself to get it done on a Saturday.

Yeah.

Um, and then it sounds like you're probably, throughout the week, you're probably like marinating on some ideas in your, in your head of like.

You see different things happening throughout the company or even in like adjacent companies, and you're like, oh, that's super interesting. Um, and naturally like this makes so much sense. 'cause naturally you're researching all this stuff during your workday, and then on Saturdays you just kind of distill everything into one piece.

Tom Orbach: Yeah, I used to, I used to, uh, like. Apple Notes used to be my, uh, big note taking, uh, uh, application, but then it gets too messy because as you said, like I get too many thoughts during the week and I get too many like ideas or things that I want to write about. So I moved to obsidian. The great thing about obsidian is that everything is connected.

So like mm-hmm. I, I, I just write a new note and I can refer to other notes and it's like a, an a nesting of notes and, uh, one thing relates to an another and it's very easy [00:09:00] to, uh, navigate between them. So obsidian is a lifesaver for me here.

Chenell Basilio: That's awesome. I am definitely the same person. I'm like, I used to work with Apple Notes and then I was trying obsidian, and then I went to Notion, and now I'm back at Apple Notes, and so it's just all over the place.

Dylan Redekop: Oh, that's great. I got one follow up question too. The one day a week thing, because people might be hearing, oh yeah. Like one day a week to spend to publish a newsletter Makes a lot of sense. I think I can manage that since I have a nine to five job. But what about growth? Like we kind of omitted how you went from like a thousand when you started to 40,000 before you launched your paid newsletter.

So what were kind of the main things that you were doing, and how were you doing those things during the week? Sure.

Tom Orbach: Okay. So I should, I should emphasize because it's a good, very good point. Um, I, I, I physically write the newsletter one day a week, but I think about the newsletter and I like try to grow it every single like waking moment.

Every, every, every, every time I'm breathing and not, not asleep. I'm growing the newsletter. So, uh, I have a few like, [00:10:00] uh, a few, uh, uh, growth levers or strategies that helps me grow to 44,000, uh, free subscribers. Uh, the biggest ones are LinkedIn, product Hunt and Substack itself. So LinkedIn, I just write a lot of content there.

Um, some of my posts are like, uh, snippets of those marketing ideas with a single screenshot from the article. And then like, if you want more, head over to marketing areas.com to read more. It's been working fine. Like it's great. Like, uh, the more you publish, the more, um, chances you have to get something go viral.

So like every time I click the post button on LinkedIn, it's like, uh, I don't know, getting a lottery ticket. And some of them hit, some of them don't and it's fine, whatever. So that LinkedIn, uh, product hand is the second biggest liver. Liver is, um. In case you don't know, product Hunt is like a website for launching new products.

Every day is like a contest of 24 hours between all of those products that launch on the same day and the [00:11:00] product that wins the day that gets the most, uh, a votes, which is a popularity contest. The product that wins gets loads of exposure and, uh, badge and trophies and. Yada. So I studied Product Hunt for the longest time, and then I actually launched and it was a huge success.

I won the first, uh, place of the day and also the first place of the week and the first place of the month, which is great. So Product Hunt alone gave me around 7,000 subscribers, uh, so far. Uh, wow. So that was. Something getting great. Yeah.

Chenell Basilio: And just from hearing other people talk about product hunt, like it's a lot of work.

It's not just like, oh, I just did this thing and it's like it worked. It's like, no, you have like probably 80 hours of work went into getting

Tom Orbach: product hunt. Yeah.

Chenell Basilio: On the first day. You know, I think

Tom Orbach: for everything, it's like everything is a lot of work. You know what I mean? Like you need to be thoughtful about and mindful about whatever you do.

Like, like. You, you need to be to actually care about it in order to succeed. It's not like, oh, like I will just write a small [00:12:00] newsletter on the side. Like, I will not care about it. I will just ship something and, and leave it. No, you need to actually care. So if you care about product and mm-hmm. And you study it and you research everything and you, uh, uh, make the right connections that you can totally win.

And, um. Get a lot of air traffic.

Chenell Basilio: I love that. Okay. Product hunt. What, what other things? Product Hunt, LinkedIn. And the third

Tom Orbach: is Substack itself. So I think it's a mix of notes and recommendations. Notes is like, everybody knows it's like a social media platform inside Substack, where a lot of author just share, uh, small, like small posts like, uh, short, uh, pieces of advice and thoughts.

It's been great. Um, what I love about notes actually is the fact that they actually show you how, how many new subscribers did you get from each note? So I can actually like, analyze and say, oh, if I write about this topic on notes, more people will come. And lately, since I, uh, started the paid newsletter as well, it actually tells you like X amount of people join the free [00:13:00] tiers and each x amount of people join the, uh, paid tier.

So, so it's great to, hmm. Analyze everything. Uh, and the second thing is the recommendations. I dunno, it's, it's been a huge growth lever and I think, uh, it's, it's a very steady one as well. Like, it's not like, so with Product Hunt you get a huge wave of new subscribers and then it's like every little bit dies down, even though I still get a few, uh, nowadays with LinkedIn as well, you post something and then you get like a big wave of new subscribers and then like the post dies down until you publish another one.

But with Substack recommendations, like it's. Always alive, you know what I mean? I always get new subscribers from, and those recommendations. So it's, uh, it's a fantastic, uh, growth lever.

Chenell Basilio: Who are you recommending with? Like how did you build those relationships through Substack to get the recommendations?

Tom Orbach: It, it's a bit more complicated. It's not really black and white, but basically I, I pitched myself to write a guest article to a lot of other publications, a lot of substack. I wrote them, I just gave like my [00:14:00] best article for them for free to publish on their own newsletter instead of my own. So they published it and they saw a lot of engagement and new subscribers.

And I also shared, oh look, I wrote a new piece for, uh, whatever. Uh, after, after that, like we became friends and I started recommending them and they recommended me. And also like, I think. Because I recommended them first, and then I got a lot of subscribers from the product and launch and from LinkedIn, they saw on their analytics that, oh my God, like there is someone named Tom that gives me a lot of new subscribers.

Maybe I'll check it out and maybe I'll recommend them back. So, right. It worked well. Switch.

Chenell Basilio: Very cool. Those, a mix of those and some other growth tactics. I'm sure I've gotten you to, you're 44,000 subscribers at this point. Um, I'm curious, you've recently launched this paid side of things. I'm curious when you decided like, okay, it's time to flip the switch.

Like I'm ready. It's been almost two years, like the time is now. Um, how are you thinking about that?

Tom Orbach: Sure. [00:15:00] So I had two, two things in my mind. First is to have a big enough mass of subscribers before I flip to switch. Uh, I flip to paid. I don't know why. I just felt like I wanted to make it first, like to see if I can actually make a big enough newsletter, even like, only if I prove to myself that I can, um, uh, like collect, uh, uh, so, so many, uh, subscribers.

Uh, only if I can prove to myself that I can do it. Then it'll be like I, I will be worthy enough to start a paid newsletter. And the second thing is that I wanted to wait until I have a really good plan for launching the paid newsletter. Like I didn't want to do it like, oh, okay. By the way, I. New, new, new tier, you can join the paid, uh, uh, like plans if you want.

If you don't want, that's fine. I didn't want to do it like, by the way, as I said before, you must be mindful about what you do. You must really care. Mm-hmm. So building up this plan took a [00:16:00] long time, and only when I felt confident enough that, uh, it's good. Then I flip this, the, the switch to paid.

Chenell Basilio: I love that.

And I, uh, just from seeing it and like hearing you talk about it. Behind the scenes, like it is a serious plan. Like you were not joking around with this. Like you had this full email sequence built out. You created a whole book around like the same time the launch. Oh, nice. You have the book. Just insane.

Yeah. Sweet. I have the book. You have the book? Yes.

Tom Orbach: Um, yeah, it was a, I saw other newsletter authors and how they launched their paid, uh, plans and it really seemed like they, it, it, it really seemed like a missed opportunity. 'cause they didn't really, like, they didn't remind people enough about it, and they didn't like have a sequence that makes people think like, it's like, you know, gradual learning about what's, uh, what's, uh, in the offer.

So yeah, I build this plan and with the book, with everything I do, I try to, like every offer that I provide, the offer must be [00:17:00] tangible and non calculable. So tangible makes sense. But non calculable meaning. Let's think about another newsletter that sends four emails per month and it costs, uh, $20. So in people's brains, everyone is, is thinking, okay, so $20 four emails per month, it means I'm paying $5 per email, which is like a cup of coffee, and I don't want people to make those comparisons.

So I thought about what. Tangible offers I could provide that will make the newsletter a bit more non calculable. Okay. So the book is one of them. And the community that I'm starting in the newsletter for, like the marketing leaders that are paying is also part of it. So it's like making the offer much more, uh, holistic and again, not non calculable.

Dylan Redekop: Right, so like offering things that they can't actually say, well, this is worth X amount per issue. You've like added so much value there that you can't just break it down like five bucks per issue. That's, that's really smart.

Tom Orbach: Exactly. I do it with everything, by the way. Like for example, I give workshops and trainings for companies, which is [00:18:00] like a 90 minute zoom call with their team.

So like I don't want them to divide the amount of minutes by the cost, right? So I give other things like, uh, a 30 minute one-on-one with the leader and also follow up ammas with the entire team via email and like to make the offer much more like. Holistic and less, less, uh, calculatable. Yeah.

Chenell Basilio: Hmm.

I love that.

Okay. Can we talk about exactly what you are including in the paid subscription offering? Sure. Just to start and then we can kind of dig into the launch and like how it's gone and that kind of thing.

Tom Orbach: Sure. So as I said, I send one, uh, marketing idea every Friday. I actually kept my best marketing ideas until I could get, uh, uh, like the, the, of course you did.

Wow. I know. But, but it does, it's not really for monetization reasons, because some of these ideas that I send, uh, every Friday now are like, if everyone started using them, they will lose their power. It's like, it's like the love declining, uh, growth channels. So I [00:19:00] wanted to keep those specific marketing ideas to a smaller audience base.

So I, I, like, I wrote a lot of articles during those two years and just waited before publishing them because, uh, I didn't want to send those for everyone. So that's what I offer. And I also, um, give archive access so you can read all of the past marketing areas, which is something that I know. People really love and, uh, they want to have like this library of marketing ideas.

And it's, this is what going on right now in, uh, marketing ideas.com. Uh, I also give the book a free PDF copy, copy of the book that, uh, Chanel has a physical version of. And, uh, starting September, uh, there will also be a community. Um, so basically it's like a group chat with me and others, and I plan to do it really well.

So I, I plan to really have a schedule and like, uh, you, you'll know in advance, uh, what are we going to discuss in the community every single day And people will share ideas and I will post [00:20:00] interviews and AMAs with my friends that will be there too. So it's gonna be like a whole uh, thing, and that that's the offering of the.

The paid tiers of marketing edits.com.

Dylan Redekop: That's awesome. I, I have, I love it. I have one question before you, before you decided to go paid, just for, for some context, were you monetizing the newsletter in any other way prior?

Tom Orbach: Mm-hmm.

Dylan Redekop: No.

Tom Orbach: Um, I wanted, I, I don't know why, but it felt. Wrong to monetize, like with ads or, uh, stuff like that.

But, um, like, it's just a hunch because I wanted to build trust with my audience, so I wanted them to, uh, really like, really enjoy free. And, uh, it worked. When I flipped the switch, uh, the two paid people really loved it.

Dylan Redekop: Yeah, you did, you did the ultimate like give, give, give, give, give, give, give, give, and then ask basically right.

Like two years basically of, of providing really. High quality, engaging free content. And then when it was time to flip the switch, which obviously you put lots of thought strategy [00:21:00] and thought behind, then it was, um, it was an easy and a much easier ask for people, which is why it was so successful. I know you don't wanna share exact numbers, but we can say that safely.

Say that you have over 500 paid subscribers. Right to the newsletter now and all,

Tom Orbach: all of those 500 joined in the first few days after launching the paid newsletter, which is amazing because it means that like. 500 people joined the premium plan before I even sent a single paywall article. So, so it's great.

Uh, people trust me and it shows because 500 people pay for a product that I have not experienced yet. Yeah. So it's great.

Dylan Redekop: Yeah. I'm included in that. I, I definitely joined Same. Especially, especially, and what Tom, honestly, one of the tactics that worked, uh, on me was like, Hey, I'm offering this entry level price.

It's gonna go, it's gonna basically double at a certain period. And so I was like, yeah, I want to get in on the, the entry level price. So I mean, I dunno how much thought went even into that, but that, that was, [00:22:00] uh, thank you. That was something that worked on me. That's, that

Tom Orbach: was actually Chanel's idea. I actually met with Chanel before flipping the switch and that's ocean.

A

Dylan Redekop: hundred bucks. I actually actually said like,

Tom Orbach: wow. I actually like told Chanel, okay, I'm going to charge 100 bucks, and she said, no, it's too cheap. You should increase the price and only of the $100 for the first day or two. So that, that's what, that's what happened. Yeah. Amazing. That's,

Dylan Redekop: yeah, that's very amusing how that went, that circle.

Why I made sure to buy in this conversation right now. My god. Yeah.

Chenell Basilio: That's why I made sure to buy when it was a hundred bucks because I was like, I know this is coming.

Dylan Redekop: I love it. Thank you.

Chenell Basilio: That's great. Um, okay, so this launch. Just seeing it. Like we had talked and you had mentioned a couple of other things, and so I'm just curious, like, can we talk through like your strategy for launching, like all of the pieces of the puzzle?

Like there's so much going on in this. Uh, I think a lot of people see, you know, Eleni Richi or someone who has a paid newsletter and they get so overwhelmed of like, how do I even begin? Like where do you start going from a free newsletter to [00:23:00] a paid newsletter? Like how did you think through the process?

Like what was involved in the launch? I'm just. Curious of like how you even started with that. Well, and also add, just

Dylan Redekop: one more follow up question to that is you mentioned sequences and with Substack you can't mm-hmm. Really quite do that. So I'm curious if you had any other software that you were using as well?

Tom Orbach: Yeah, it's not really a real sequence, it's like a manual sequence. It just planned out in an Excel sheet beforehand and like, and then every single day or a few hours, I go ahead and send the emails. So I think. Like, my biggest advice is to send multiple emails. You know what I mean? Like, yeah. If you send just like one lunch email and Oh, here's my paid plan, like some people will, will read it, some people will, will not read it, but most of the people will read it and then forget about it.

So I. You need to send a lot of emails, like my plan. And real

Chenell Basilio: quick, before you keep going, when did you start sending emails? Like hinting at this? Like was it early on? Was it just a couple days before

Tom Orbach: hinting? Never like, it was a surprise, I think. Sorry.

Chenell Basilio: No, [00:24:00] but you never, like

Tom Orbach: before, before you actually opened the doors

Dylan Redekop: though, like opened the cart, if you will.

Chenell Basilio: Yeah.

Tom Orbach: Never like. No one knew like except for 10 friends like Chanel who helped me with the advice no one knew before. I think that's so interesting 'cause you

Chenell Basilio: always hear people, marketing people say, like, tease it beforehand. Let people know

Tom Orbach: why. Like if I tease them and they cannot pay, how will it help me?

I'm wondering, like, interesting.

Dylan Redekop: Yeah, that's the whole, uh, Jeff Walker's like product launch formula. I, there's something along those lines. I can't remember the exact name of the, of the book, but he's always like, so you gotta seed your list or, or seed the, you know, pre-sell the, the thing that you're going to be launching, um, with people basically at the most, being able to sign up for like, on a wait list or maybe add their names to like a prelaunch, um, sort of list.

Um, and then. They're kind of primed once you actually like open the doors. So you didn't do anything along those lines.

Tom Orbach: Yeah. That's smart. What I, what you said. I didn't do it. Mm-hmm. But, uh, it's a smart, it's a smart idea. I think people should do [00:25:00] it, but I think it's a mess. Like especially in Substack when there, there is no automations, it's a mess to keep a separate list of wait list.

But it's a smart, like conceptually, I like it. It, it should work. Well, what you just said. Anyway, no, I, I didn't tease anything. I just dropped the bomb one morning. It was a Wednesday morning and I said, uh, uh, here is everything that I offered. It was a very long email with a lot of social proof and tangible things.

And, um, if you join in the next 24 hours, uh, you will get, uh, a very discounted price. So that was the first email. And again, of course, after 12 hours in the evening of that same day. I sent a reminder, and each reminder is not like a, you know, A-G-G-P-T generated email, like, oh, reminding you about things.

It's usually with added value, like my feelings, my experience, or like, uh, hinting at another thing that is coming and et cetera.

Chenell Basilio: Mm.

Tom Orbach: The day after. Okay. There was, uh, it's unfortunately I had to extend the sale. I had an issue with the stripe. [00:26:00] Again, first time charging anything online, right? So sale extension.

For another 24 hours and then that evening, another like reminder that, um. The, the sale is going to end soon. So that's the first 48 hours, Friday morning book launch. Uh, I initially wanted to launch the book with everything else, but Chanel smartly told me not to do it, like to wait with the book, uh, for Friday.

So, so that's great. So I, I launched the book and I said that each, uh, paid subscriber gets the book for free, like a PDF copy. So that's Friday, and then Saturday, like an f, a Q, about the book. Sunday, um, the first chapter of the book for free, and then if you want more, click here to subscribe and read the rest.

Uh, Monday social proof that I generated within the last, uh, five days. Like, uh, social, social proof of the paid subscribers and the things that they've been saying in the last four days. So that's like a lot of, uh, testimonials and quotes. Uh, Tuesday, uh, [00:27:00] is another like sale that's going on like a smaller sale than before and only until Friday, Wednesday, uh, another Monday.

Reminder, like, so as, as you can see, it's a lot of emails and uh, like the entire lunch week or campaign ended the Friday after. So it's like nine days, uh, where each day, uh, was about one or two emails. Now, not all of the emails were sent to everyone. Some of the emails, I only send them to the most engaged subscribers because I didn't want to, um.

Like people to unsubscribe. So some of the reminders were only sent to the top 2000 most engaged readers. Uh, so that was part of the strategy and yeah, that, that's how, that's how, that's how the launch plan, uh, looked like.

Chenell Basilio: So what, because Substack shows you, which emails drove the most. Paid subscribers.

Can you see like, was it the beginning of the launch, the end, the middle? Like which emails had the biggest impact?

Tom Orbach: The, the, the one email that had the biggest impact is the reminder [00:28:00] email of the first day. Why? Okay. Because it had the most urgency. I think it was like 10, 10 hours left. For the one time, or like one time sale.

Also, the book launch was big. People really want the book. Uh, yeah, the cover looks good. And, uh, it's a PDF copy. It's like 400 pages. You get to keep it forever. Like why not? Mm-hmm. And I anticipated it. A lot of people will just do one month and then cancel just to get a book, which is fine. Like if they, it's your, their choice.

But today, exactly 30 days after that launch, I see that, uh, all of, like, most of the subscribers, uh, are still subscribed, like the paid ones, so almost no one unsubscribed, which is great.

Chenell Basilio: Wow. Yeah. Just for a little behind the scenes, Tom was, I don't think you were going to create a physical book and I kind of bullied him into doing it because, I mean, look at this cover, like it's just so good, right?

Like. And like the inside, it's like a full color. Yeah. Oh, you got the Oly example

Tom Orbach: [00:29:00] right there. It's a great marketing idea. Mm, yeah. Yeah.

Chenell Basilio: Oh, it's so good.

Tom Orbach: Yeah. Thank you so much. Yeah, so sorry for, I only fully knew into that. I only into five books. And you got one of them. The, the other four are like in my closet.

Yeah.

Chenell Basilio: Amazing.

Dylan Redekop: Wow. Thank you. Is there, do you have any plans to expand that or like put it on, um, like Amazon or anything like that? Or is it, was it just like strictly a, just a list, little test you wanted to do for the launch?

Tom Orbach: That's a good question. I think I will keep it like only to my paid subscribers.

Like I want it to be a gift that you can only get there. And feels about the physical version. It, it feels good. Oh, no, no. The physical, I will never do it again. It's so expensive. I'll not You like I, have you ever printed the book? It's so expensive to do just five copies.

Dylan Redekop: Well, I was gonna ask you like a hardcover book.

I can only imagine that's like 300 pages. I I would think that's like full color all Don't love

Tom Orbach: them full color with all of the screenshots and examples. It's, uh, no, no way. I, I would never print it. It's gotta be hundreds

Dylan Redekop: of dollars per book kind of thing. [00:30:00] I, I would think, but I'm, you don't have to tell us, but I.

I can only imagine that was probably over a thousand dollars for five books or give or take, something like that. So that's give or take,

Tom Orbach: something like that. Yeah. Yeah,

Dylan Redekop: yeah. Wow, amazing.

Chenell Basilio: Well, thank you for making a physical comment

Tom Orbach: course. Well, but the thing is that now that my newsletter is making money, I can write, write it off as a business expense, so mm-hmm.

It all takes out, yeah. Beforehand, whenever I spent money on the newsletter, like I, it wasn't a business expense and. Like it was, it was, it was not fun. But now it's like fun to grow my newsletter by spending money, like on ads or stuff to see what happens. Like every, everything is now an experiment, so it's great.

I can pay for stuff.

Chenell Basilio: Are there anything, like anything in the last 30 days that you've started paying for to grow the newsletter? Like now that you have that feedback loop of paid subscriber money?

Tom Orbach: Yeah, so I, it's not really cor correlated for the growth, but I bought a whole new gear. Like camera gear and mm-hmm.

Microphones and teleprompter. So it's great, uh, [00:31:00] to have these calls with you guys right now, uh, in a higher quality. Um, but also I experimented with more types of ads, uh, on LinkedIn mostly. Um, okay. None of them delivered so far, but it's fun that I can just like try and see what happens.

Chenell Basilio: Yeah. You'll have a lot more good experiments to write about too.

Dylan Redekop: Absolutely a, any desire to do, um, Facebook ads or anything like that?

Tom Orbach: Not really. I, I, like, as a marketer, like, I know it's not so easy to target the right people with Facebook and nowadays for, uh, like a reasonable price. So I, I don't, I don't even want to start, like I, I don't like it.

Dylan Redekop: I have a question just about now that you've got a paid newsletter and people are paying to hear from you, has that changed how you.

Approach the content or your mindset around it? 'cause just personally, I can imagine if I all of a sudden had over 500 people who are paying me to publish content that, you know is worth paying for every week, um, I would feel this like intense amount of pressure to deliver on that. Um, and, but I mean, you've been [00:32:00] doing it for two years and so they trust you and you know that what you're writing about is good.

But has that changed at all the way you've like. Thought about your, I guess the pressure you feel about writing the content or anything like that, and do you ever worry about running out of content?

Tom Orbach: So you're, you're absolutely correct. Like, I was terrified and suddenly, like I, I felt like I had to write better content or a bit longer content.

And I always try to keep my content short and like to the point, and here's the marketing area, here's the pragmatic way to do it. But suddenly I felt like I should. Like provide more info and more, um, I dunno, background materials for each marketing idea. So that's what I do now. I, I, I feel like, like I literally spend more time per article, but it's great because I keep building this big library of really good marketing ideas and there are guides, so it's been working really good.

Dylan Redekop: Do you, do you worry that you'll run out of. Marketing ideas or things to write about

Tom Orbach: that? That's a great question. A really good question I've been thinking about a lot. So first, uh, I got a, I got a full schedule already [00:33:00] until the end of 2026. Okay. And that's not including new ideas that I think about in the day to day.

And like this list is keep getting longer and longer. I. However, uh, to like, to mitigate the risk that I run out of, uh, marketing areas, uh, one of the perks of joining the paid subscription is you get career growth advice. Mm. So once a month, instead of the usual marketing areas, I write about career, for example, how to be more creative and how to, uh, do reverse engineering in marketing and stuff like.

That are not per se marketing areas, but are skills that marketers should have. So I write guides about that and um, it's like, it gives me a bit of leeway because, uh, like a quarter of my content is suddenly, suddenly not new marketing areas, but further, uh. Just career advice, so, so it's a, yeah, it's a good point.

Very cool.

Chenell Basilio: I love that. This is reminding me of like the whole Lenny thing, right? Didn't he start with Q [00:34:00] and As like questions from the audience and then he moved to like research and then he is also doing career stuff.

Tom Orbach: Yeah. Nowadays most of these content is like guest posts, which is great as well, but like you rarely see a piece by Lenny.

Which is like a great concept.

Chenell Basilio: When is the, uh, Tom Orach Lenny Ky thing happening?

Tom Orbach: Ah, maybe sound day. You do a guest post? Yeah.

Chenell Basilio: Maybe sound. That would definitely get you some readers, I'm sure.

Dylan Redekop: Mm-hmm. Totally. I have, I have one follow up question too. The. Two, basically going from free to paid. What would be somebody who's listening to this right now has a decent, a decent list, um, on maybe on Substack, maybe not, and they're thinking about going to paid.

What would be kind of like your number one piece of advice for them when they're making that switch?

Tom Orbach: So again, I think be really mindful and thoughtful about your launch. Mm-hmm. Like don't just flip the switch and wait for people to find out that you have a paid newsletter and like convert somehow. You need to make a launch plan and think about what emails are we going to send and how will be the [00:35:00] first, like in the first few weeks after the launch, like which paid content you will send and what, what will be free.

Like be really mindful about it. I think that's my biggest advice. Okay. I think that's, that's really solid advice.

Chenell Basilio: Do you have any, anything that you would've changed from your launch? Like any mistakes you maybe you made or, or just different things you would've done?

Tom Orbach: That's a great question. I, I think it's not, I don't know if it's a mistake, but I would've liked to know, I.

In advance that I will get some negative attention. What do I mean by that? I did get, like, uh, more than 500 subscribers in the first week, and it, it, it's been great and I got a lot of love and like my, the, the, the readers really like what I did here, but there are some people that will never pay for any newsletter, not mine, and not, uh, other newsletters.

Yeah. And they feel really betrayed, you know, and it's fine. Like it's. Their feeling like they, they got used to getting free content for me, and they started sending me really like, uh, aggressive emails. [00:36:00] Like, what are you doing? Like, this is not good. They, they used really hard words and I wasn't prepared for it.

But, uh, maybe like, this is something I would've loved to know like in advance that, uh, it's going to happen.

Dylan Redekop: Well now people listening to this are, are, can expect it to some degree if they decide to ever go to pay that you might get a few people who are gonna share some unkind words with you. And for what it's worth, from my perspective, I think you are doing them a service, providing them all this free information that you're.

Creating for them. Curating and creating. And it's like if you decide that you want to put that behind a paywall, that's your prerogative. A hundred percent. And yeah, they may, they might not want to pay for it, but like I could see how they'd be like, well, I can't afford it, so now I can't get it. That sucks for me.

But like, I mean, everyone's so used to free content. Like I just think this is the way, yeah, this is the way it is. This is the way it is, pay the people who are doing the work. Sure. I

Tom Orbach: try to be transparent about it. Like pay, like free subscribers can remain free and it's fine. And they will [00:37:00] get one free marketing idea per month.

And it's, I think it's a good deal if you want, but, uh, like, it wasn't like, I, I don't know, like, uh, try to, um, uh, deceive some people. Mm-hmm. Like promising stuff that didn't happen. Like, you still get one free I, I, uh, marketing area, but instead of once a week. It's going to be once a month.

Chenell Basilio: Yeah,

Tom Orbach: that's it.

Chenell Basilio: Yeah. Sometimes people just feel like everything should be free, so that's not on you. Yeah. It's not a great business model, so I'm sorry to hear that. Okay, so I've, I see that with the paid stuff. Now, the free version is sponsored, so you're now diving into sponsorships at the same time as a paid newsletter.

Is that right?

Tom Orbach: Yeah, I, I didn't plan it, but uh Okay, so something weird that happened. Since I flipped the switch, my growth rate for this free subscriptions and actually for the pay two, like the growth, the natural growth rate that I used to experience. It's like, it's like doubled now. Yes. Amazing. I checked, how did it happen?

Because like, how come I get a wave of new free [00:38:00] subscribers? It's weird. Where did they come from? And apparently it's from the substack owned channels. So notes and recommendations are now, like I, I get so many new subscribers from those uh, uh, channels. Mm. Now it makes sense, right? Mm-hmm. Because think about substack.

What do they want? They want to make more money. How do they make money when I make more money? So they want me to make more money, so they send more subscribers to my way. So like the algorithm is prioritizing me with notes and, uh, uh, recommendations and, and it's, and it's been great. So part of that huge growth, um, also attracted, uh, advertisers and sponsors that want to sponsor the newsletter.

And I said, why not? So, um, I, yeah, I welcome the first one, uh, last week. I decided to do it very rarely, so it's like only four or five times per year. I will, uh, have a sponsor and, um, uh, see what happen. So far I didn't get any pushback for the sponsor and it's only on the free articles, like not the paid, the paid, uh, [00:39:00] subscribers don't have sponsors on their content.

Dylan Redekop: Okay. And

Chenell Basilio: yeah. That's so interesting.

Dylan Redekop: I, I got a few follow-up comments to that. One of them is I did an interview with, uh, the guys who run the newsletter conference in, um, I think you were both there, weren't you at the newsletter conference, Ryan? Yeah, yeah, yeah. In New York. First front row. Front row. Yeah, front row.

There you go. So Ryan was on, when I was doing the sparkly podcast, he, him and Jesse actually were both on the sparkly podcast interview them, and one of their big. Things that they said was, they're really, of course, now this is coming from their bias being advertisers and people who, you know, source advertisement, but they are very strong proponents of people putting ads even in paid spot, paid newsletters in paywall to newsletters because their, their idea is like, well, if this is a product that's really going to benefit our readers, um, if there's like really good alignment with it, then you're doing them a favor by getting that in front of them, because yeah, it might be an ad, it might be something that they have to pay to.

To do or to read or to consume. But if it's, if the alignment's there and it's actually gonna benefit them, then why would you not do that? [00:40:00] So that was an interesting thing that I, I kind of wrestled with a little bit because I see it being one of those things where you're like, well, I'm paying for the content.

I don't wanna get ads for it. Other things as well. So, I dunno, it's, it's a weird, I think that's a good, that's a very

Tom Orbach: good point. But I think, I don't do it because of my, like it's not the relationship with my paid audience, it's the relationship with the advertiser. Because like, my, my total paid subscriber count is less than a thousand people.

So I dunno, it feels wrong to me to put an ad for less than a thousand people because how much will them convert? How many, yeah. Like, uh, 5%. So it's like. I know it's not a lot of people, and I said, that's right. I don't think it's a good deal for the advertiser. So that's why I don't really do it like yeah, at the moment.

That makes sense.

Dylan Redekop: That's fair. But yeah, I guess a large, you know, 95% of your list is on the free, so keeping it to that, that doesn't make some sense. Yeah. Chanel, did you wanna follow up with the, um,

Chenell Basilio: I have, I have something completely different, so if you wanted Keep going. Go for it.

Dylan Redekop: I just thought it was interesting about the other, my other point was a substack, [00:41:00] like, now that you've turned unpaid and you've, you became a Substack bestseller.

Right. In, in the, at least in the marketing niche if, or business niche? I think it was. You mean

Tom Orbach: the business niche? I, I think the bestseller is for like everyone that has more than 100 paid subscribers. Okay. So it was like between a few, after a few hours of launching paid, which is, which is fun. Dang,

Dylan Redekop: that's amazing.

Congratulations on that. The fact that you are now. It's almost like this hack, if you will, of getting in front of that many more people by turning on paid and getting those initial, that initial growth on, um, on your launch with the paid subscribers. So it's, of course, they're gonna want to promote you and show you to more people now that you're driving revenue for yourself and for them.

So I think it's, is Substack still 10% that they take in terms of revenue? Correct.

Tom Orbach: 10%. Yeah. And I want to add something more like it's just a hypothesis that I have. Mm-hmm. Please. That when people see it's a paid newsletter, like. They feel. They feel it. It has more value. And even if they just joined the free [00:42:00] tier, they feel like there's more to it.

You know what I mean? Mm-hmm. So maybe this also helped attract more subscribers? Yeah. Since I launched the paid. Plans.

Dylan Redekop: Yeah, that's a good point. Oh, well this thing's paid, but you still got a free tier, so that's gotta be really good or really valuable since Yeah. You know, asking. Yeah, exactly. That's a really interesting kind of like, I dunno, buyer bias or something along those lines.

Some buyer psychology there.

Chenell Basilio: Oh, that's so smart. I like that. And it, it makes sense, but like you don't think about that until it happens. I'm sure. Then you're like, oh yeah, well that, that's clearly obviously how they would do that. Yeah. I'm curious, so you're the marketing ideas guy. You now have like a schedule through 2026 you said of like things to write about so you don't have to spend your mind share.

Thinking about that, what kind of ideas do you have for marketing this and like growing the newsletter from here like. Do you have any big grand plans you wanna try or what's coming next? Yeah,

Tom Orbach: so my overall plan is to do micro lunches of new stuff for my readers. So for example, the upcoming one is the [00:43:00] community that I promised in advance, but it's going to happen soon and I'm going to have a big party around it in September.

Like, oh, there's a new community. Um. Group chat for, uh, uh, 1000 marketing leaders in the top, uh, uh, companies. So, so that's one launch. But I plan to have, uh, many, uh, smaller launches, um, throughout like every, every couple of months. Uh, so it could be like a resource, like another book for example or another, uh, anything like that.

But it could be also like a new benefit, uh, that I maybe will not share yet. But, uh, I, I have a few ideas for, uh, micro lunches. And like I want to keep, it's also for me to keep everything interesting. I want to keep, I want to keep a cadence of new things that are happening besides just the one email per week.

So, yeah, that, that's what planned and each, each of those micro lunches will get a massive lunch. On the newsletter and on social media and like in communities and et cetera. So, yeah. Uh, that, that's, that's [00:44:00] overall the, my plan.

Chenell Basilio: So the community, are you launching that on Slack or what community? That's a good question.

Tom Orbach: I hate Slack. Okay. Yes. And I also hate Discord. Um, I want, I want it to be a. Simple as possible. So it might be on substack on, uh, chat platform, but it could be on something like WhatsApp or something like that. I, I don't know yet. Because the, the issue with WhatsApp is that it requires participants to give up their phone number, like anonymity.

Um, I will say, but I want it to be very direct chat. Like I, I hate all of those Slack communities with like. Thousands of, uh, of, uh, groups and, uh, and they, it's, it's so messy and I mm-hmm. Like, I hate it. I just want a streamlined chat and, uh, and that's it. Like it works best that way.

Chenell Basilio: I'm always interested now that we like growth and reverse pro is a thing.

I'm always interested in how people are planning on doing community and like what that looks like. Uh, but you said you're gonna have AMAs and everything with other. Either paid subscribers or just outsiders that you bring in.

Tom Orbach: Yeah, [00:45:00] exactly. Uh, still planning it out. I still have a little bit of time, but, uh, I want to bring in friends from like marketing, uh, like the marketing world to do AMAs in the chat in the, in the community.

And I hope that people will find value in it because like my network is pretty good. I think I know a lot of really senior people. In the marketing world. So I hope, um, people would love to ask them questions about their job and what they do and how they come up with new marketing ideas.

Dylan Redekop: I probably should have asked this at the very beginning, but are you more focused on like B2B marketing and marketers, or is it B2C or is it a blend?

A blend, yeah. Okay.

Tom Orbach: A blend. So I think like my. My, the, the holy Grail of my marketing areas, uh, are like the best marketing areas that I share are the ones that you can apply everywhere, right? Only a small subset are just for B2C or just for B2B, or just for something like that. Okay. But almost all of them are like, you can apply them everywhere, and it's not really.

That's [00:46:00] the difference between tactic and idea. So it's like the tactic could be, especially for B2B, because that's what you do, but the idea itself, the core idea, the human psychology and like the marketing channel and that you exploit, this is the idea that you can leverage in any, any niche. Makes sense.

Okay.

Chenell Basilio: Well I'm always a big fan of reading your newsletter, so I'm excited to see where this goes. But yeah. Um, before, I mean, I guess everyone can just go to marketing ideas.com, uh, to sign up if they want to join. Check out what you're doing, see how you're running the paid newsletter. Anywhere else that you'd want people to go to.

Tom Orbach: No, I think marketing ideas.com is the best way to read my content. I will say, like, see, I, I, I told you, I, I got a lot of attention after launching my paid newsletter. I also shared my progress on Substack notes. So a lot of other newsletter authors, uh, they saw my stuff and they saw my progress and like, uh, how everything, uh, went well.

And so many people, you, you have no idea how many people messaged me and told me like, oh, give me just like [00:47:00] one piece of advice, give me a growth idea, something to how to grow my newsletter. And like Substack shows you that they're not subscribed to the newsletter because if they were subscribed, they had little label that says Subscribers.

But they're not, and like all they have to do to get growth advice for me is to click on my name and click on marketing areas.com, which is like the Substack newsletter that I operate, and that, that's it. Like read my latest content, I share all of the behind the scenes in my newsletter. I, I have multiple articles about growing my own newsletter, like as a product.

And like people don't read it for some reason. Like they, they don't try to click and see through If I shared this advice already, so like. I dunno. Be curious please, like, be like, be more like resourceful, active and Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. And, and like click on my name and click on marketing.com and actually read the newsletter before you, uh, ask me questions.

Yeah, please.

Chenell Basilio: It's so simple, but so hard for people to do, I guess, [00:48:00]

apparently.

Yeah. Amazing. Hmm. Well Tom, thanks for coming on the show. We appreciate you being here. This is great. Uh, can't wait to see where the paid newsletter goes for you and, uh. Yeah. Excited to keep reading the newsletter. Mm-hmm.

Dylan Redekop: Thank you so much, congrat.